How to add a contact to your iPhone Home Screen and call them in one tap

Calling someone via your iPhone’s Phone app or with Siri is easy enough. But, did you know you can call someone quickly with just a single tap? You can if you add the contact to your iPhone Home Screen. When you do that, you don’t have to open the Phone app and find their contact card to reach them. Just a single tap places the call.

Here’s how to quickly call a person in one tap from the iPhone Home Screen.

Call in one tap on iPhone

Backstory

My mother isn’t tech-savvy and often forgets how to access the Favorites and Contacts list. Plus, she can’t see the screen properly without glasses. Even after increasing the iPhone text size, things aren’t always very comfortable for her.

To help, I created contact cards for the few family members she calls the most on her iPhone Home Screen. Now, she can simply unlock the phone, tap the person’s picture on the Home Screen, and it instantly starts the call. Let me show you how.

How to add a person’s contact to iPhone Home Screen

Follow these steps to create a shortcut to instantly call someone in one tap:

1) Open the Shortcut app and from My Shortcuts, tap the plus icon (+).

2) Type Call in the bottom search box and tap a suggested contact. To call someone else, tap the tiny plus icon. If you want to make it a FaceTime call, search for FaceTime and add that.

Create new call shortcut

3) If you chose a contact in step 2, move to step 4. If you went with the tiny plus icon, tap the faint blue “Contact” word and select a person from your address book.

4) From the top, rename the shortcut to something relevant like Sebastien or Call Sebastien.

5) Tap the Settings icon from the top right.

Choose contact to call

6) Tap Add to Home Screen.

7) Tap the tiny shortcut icon > Choose Photo and pick an image from your library.

Add contact shortcut to iPhone Home Screen

8) Finally, tap Add. You’ve now successfully created the shortcut to call the person in one tap and added it to the Home Screen. If you tap this icon that resembles an app icon, it will instantly call the person.

Contact shortcut added to iPhone Home Screen

To slightly increase the size of this icon, go to iPhone Settings > Display & Brightness > View and choose Zoomed.

Repeat this process to add more contacts.

To remove a shortcut icon from the Home Screen, press it and tap Delete Bookmark > Delete.

Make the icon even bigger!

If you want to make the icon even larger (and lose the customized image), you can do that by adding this shortcut as a widget on the iPhone Home Screen.

1) Press anywhere on the Home Screen until the app icons start shaking and tap the plus icon in the top left of the screen.

2) Scroll down and tap Shortcuts.

3) Tap Add Widget below the first single shortcut.

Add call shortcut widget to iPhone Home Screen

4) To change the shortcut in the shortcut widget, press the widget > Edit Widget and choose the desired shortcut.

How to add the Contacts widget to iPhone Home Screen

You can also add the Contacts widget to the iPhone Home Screen, and tapping it will open that contact. The benefit of this method is that it shows a huge profile picture of the contact. And the drawback is you need to first tap the widget and then the call button. This means, instead of a single tap (as the shortcut method above), you have to tap twice. But still, it’s a straightforward solution to quickly call, message, or email someone.

1) Open the Phone or Contacts app and tap a person’s contact.

2) Tap Edit > Add Photo > photo icon and set an image. You can also add a Memoji. Tap Done to save this picture for the contact.

Add photo to contact on iPhone

3) Press anywhere on the Home Screen until all app icons start shaking, and tap the plus icon from the top left.

4) Scroll down and tap Contacts.

5) Choose a widget size. I’ll go with the first one and tap Add Widget.

Add Contacts widget to iPhone Home Screen

6) If the contact in this widget isn’t the one you want, press the Contacts widget on the Home Screen and tap Edit Widget. Now, you can choose any other contact to show in this widget.

7) When you tap this widget, it’ll open that contact’s card. You’ll see all the attachments, recent message, shared links, and other details. It’s pretty informative and helpful. Tap call, FaceTime, or message as desired.

Rich Contact Details on iPhone

To remove a widget from your iPhone Home Screen, press it and tap Remove Widget > Remove.

This is how you can create a shortcut of a contact on the iPhone or iPad Home Screen to call them quickly and easily. As mentioned, it’s very helpful for grandparents and elders who often need to regularly reach the same person like their children, grandkids, nurse, or doctor.

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